


With Meaning

by Kivan



Series: Andreil Week 2019 [3]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: A Stupid Understanding of Pain and Terrible People, Andreil Week 2019, M/M, Obvious Ending, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 13:46:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19746982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kivan/pseuds/Kivan
Summary: “It’s a simple one, I think,” Neil tells her and hands over his idea.He hears Kevin scoff behind him, “Of course.”





	With Meaning

**Author's Note:**

> For Andreil Week 2019.  
> this is hard.

Day3-tattoo; With Meaning

Neil understood pain. He knew the feeling of a broken bone. He knew the feeling of a sprain, and a tear and a cut and a wound. He could tell from the feel of a cut if it would require stiches.

When the foxes found this out in his sophomore year, after a rough game, no one was impressed. Nicky cried. Dan held his hand for hours with a haunted look on her face. Matt told him _I’m sorry people are so shitty_. Renee held his gaze with understanding. Allison glared in something similar. Aaron didn’t have anything snarky to say. Andrew smoked in the dorm room, while Kevin drank though a fifth of whisky.

The idea of imposing pain on himself was foreign. But he didn’t remember the first time he got a tattoo, so he wasn’t sure if the idea of choosing what he was branding on his own skin would be appealing or intoxicating.

It was novel enough that he’d already spent a week thinking about what it would be by the time he voiced it out loud.

“As long as it’s not an exy racket,” Andrew voiced back, sighing out a plume of smoke around the words. Oddly, that idea hadn’t occurred to him yet, and Neil just as quickly had dismissed it.

“What about an A for Andrew,” Nicky suggested the next day with an unsubtle wink. Neil didn’t deem that idea worth a reply.

“What about a fox paw,” Matt suggest, and Neil thinks of his small doodles for a moment.

“I’d just get my make-up tattooed on,” Allison suggests while adeptly reapplying her lipstick.

Dan was quiet, “Whatever it is, it’s something you’d have for the rest of your life, and that’s not something to take lightly.”

“Does something in particular have that kind of meaning to you, Neil,” Renee asks.

It was a Saturday morning when Kevin leads him into the tattoo shop where he had his ‘2’ inked over. The young artist on the other side of the counter, who sported only a small spattering of flowers over her left wrist smiles up at them. “Hello again, Mr. Day. And you must be Mr. Josten. What can I do for you today?”

“It’s a simple one, I think,” Neil tells her and hands over his idea.

He hears Kevin scoff behind him, “Of course.”

“Should be easy enough,” she agrees, with a smile, “Let me draw this up. Shouldn’t take too long. Have a seat.”

As he sits in the chair, his arm out stretched Neil feels the lines take shape on his forearm, and he smiles feeling as liberated as he expected under the small needling of the tattoo gun.

That night of the roof he asks Andrew, “Do you want to see it?”

Andrew looks over at him and Neil teases at the edge of the wrap the artist had applied with a grin. Andrew quirks one brow and Neil peels up the wrap. They both look at it and Neil feels his smile threaten to break over his lips.

Andrew huffs, but he’s grinning just slightly. “Idiot. Now we’ll have to change the locks.”

“You can’t make a key from a drawing, Andrew.”

“It is a very detailed drawing,” Andrew rebuts, and Neil watches him smile, his arm between them. The shape of the key to the front door of the house in Columbia tattooed in heavy black lines along his forearm.


End file.
